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26 March 2012

In Utah, the question isn’t whether the LDS Church wields hefty political clout, but how it does so. And the answer, according to state legislators, may surprise some.

That Mormon influence, lawmakers say, does not generally come from edicts over the pulpit or through lobbying in the halls of the Capitol. Instead, it comes indirectly — mainly through legislators’ own religious views.

After all, most elected officials here are Latter-day Saints who vote based on values instilled in them as Mormons — and even non-LDS officials try to reflect the will of constituents who are overwhelmingly Mormon.

But lawmakers concede that the state’s predominant faith is directly involved on a few select issues, such as immigration, alcohol, gambling and gay rights — and a nod of approval from the LDS hierarchy is usually needed for bills affecting those areas to proceed, according to a questionnaire sent to legislators by The Salt Lake Tribune.

Mitt Romney, the front runner in the race for the Republican Presidential nomination for the White House, is a devout Mormon, but his cousin, Park Romney, also in the past a committed member of the church, now denounces it as a cult.

“I became convinced that it’s a fraud,” Park Romney told the BBC, explaining his reason for leaving the Mormon fold.

The two visions of Mormonism the Romney cousins present could not be more starkly opposed.

Park Romney, 56, is a former Mormon high priest, who turned against the church.

Not all Romneys are as enamored of Mormonism as Mitt. Take Park Romney, Mitt’s cousin. He used to be a Mormon high priest, but finally left the religion. “I became convinced that it’s a fraud,” he tells the BBC. He doubts many aspects of the religion, such as founder Joseph Smith’s prophecies, including those based on Smith’s translation of an Egyptian scroll he said he purchased from a traveling mummy exhibit. The translation, which became part of the Mormon book of Abraham, has been discredited by Egyptologists. “There’s compelling evidence that the Mormon Church leaders knowingly and willfully misrepresent the historical truth of their origins and of the church for the purpose of deceiving their members into a state of mind that renders them exploitable,” says Park Romney, 56.

A frequent charge raised against Mormonism is that Mormons practice polygamy, which many people oppose for various reasons ranging from religious or moral convictions to concerns about the treatment or degradation of women. There is no denying that polygamy was accepted and practiced by the mainstream Mormon church for part of the nineteenth century, though it was not practiced by the majority of Mormons. (The great-grandfather of GOP candidate Mitt Romney, Miles Park Romney, was a polygamist in Utah, and ultimately left to Mexico with his family to escape prosecution for the practice.) It is also true that the practice continues today among some fringe Mormon sects, but it’s far outside the mainstream of the official church. The stereotype that all Mormons practice polygamy sticks because of history and popular abuse, but not only is polygamy not an accepted practice within the Church of Latter-day Saints, it was proscribed by the Church over a century ago.

The most popular theory is that Romney’s Mormon faith is the culprit. Mormons tend to think of their religion as compatible with Christianity, but this view is strongly rejected by most evangelical Christians. A survey of Protestant pastors last year found that 75 percent of them don’t believe that Mormons are Christians, and a recent Pew poll found that only 35 percent of white evangelical Republicans voters think that Mormons are Christians.

Suspicion of Mormonism seems particularly pronounced among Southern Baptists and Pentecostals, and occasionally evangelical leaders with give voice to this, as Robert Jeffress, a Baptist pastor from Texas, did last fall when he called Mormonism a “theological cult.” Jeffress, who stressed that he would still back Romney over Barack Obama in the fall, expressed his refusal to support Romney in the primaries this way:

But to those of us who are evangelicals, when all other things are equal, we prefer competent Christians to competent non-Christians who may be good, moral people like Mitt Romney.

They rocked and rolled but didn’t trash the place. Southern California youth who belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints attended the annual Mormon Prom on March 17th at Soka University in Aliso Viejo.

Young people ages 16-18 from Rancho Santa Margarita, Mission Viejo, San Clemente, and Laguna Niguel congregations were invited to join the seventh annual event.

“It is all about having wholesome fun and a positive dating experience while being with a group of youth that share the same high standards,” said Marci Paul, the Young Women President for Foothill Ranch.

Groups that could decide to challenge last week’s big water decision are weighing their options. The Great Basin Water Network is one potential litigant against State Engineer Jason King’s decision to permit pumping more than 80,000 acre-feet of water from rural Nevada and Utah to Las Vegas.

Rose Strickland, public lands chair for the Toiyabe Chapter of the Sierra Club, says pipeline opponents have less than a month to decide if they want to challenge it in court. In the state process, a number of groups opposed the pipeline, including the Mormon church, conservation groups, county governments of rural Nevada and Utah, and Native American communities in the region.

“From the tribes to the Mormon church, I’m sure all of the protestants will be reading these extremely long rulings on the four valleys, before making that decision.”

A couple of years from now, when White returns from his Mormon mission and once again finds himself in that same position, maybe this time he scoots through the gap, gets his shot off quicker, higher and faster, and feels the breeze of that figurative door barely sweeping behind him as the shot floats past a hang-gliding shot blocker by the sliver of a finger nail.

By January, Gingrich’s “open marriage” scandal was out in the open. That he’d left two wives for new wives was widely known. These are things that evangelicals, at least the ones I grew up around, typically frown on. This is the stuff of movies I wasn’t allowed to watch as a kid. And this was the man that evangelical Christians supported.

Why God, why?

Because he appears more politically conservative than, say, Mitt Romney, who, by the way, has one wife and a brood of sons. Sure, Romney is a Mormon, which seems weird to evangelicals mostly because they don’t know anything about Mormonism; but in the end it wasn’t his different faith that cost him South Carolina, it was the perceived threat that since he was moderate once, he could be again. So, Newt Gingrich won in South Carolina.

NOTE: This is posted for those who are interested in keeping abreast what is being said around the world about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members. MormonVoices cannot and does not guarantee the validity or truthfulness of any information reported. The responsibility for the interpretation and use of this information lies with the reader. As all information comes from other news sources and has not been independently verified, MormonVoices cannot guarantee or be responsible for the security of links in the clipping service. MormonVoices will attempt as much as possible to exclude news articles containing strongly offensive language or which lead to offensive images, but cannot guarantee that some will not slip through.

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